Allium ursinum, or Ramsons, is a very common plant in the woods round here, in some places making a completely white carpet, beautiful were it not for the overpowering smell of garlic. This is so strong that one gets wafts of it while driving along. The dominance I atribute to a) its vigour and competitiveness with big broad leaves, and b) as with bluebells, it can grow in what later becomes very dense shade, but completes its lifecycle before the leaves develop. The name is curious. I looked it up in Geoffrey Grigson's invaluable 'The Englishman's Flora', first published 1955, which gives all known English vernacular names for most wild flowers, with commentary on these and the plant. It is not a flora in the normal sense, but a superb addition to drier tomes. For Ramsons he gives an assortment of names connected with stink, and garlic/leeks/onions etc, then we get: "RAMPS (rams in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German) in [the counties/areas] of Lancashire, Cumbria, Lake District, Northumberland, Scotland, Ireland" [all Norsemen-plagued & settled] with the variants of RAMSDEN, RAMSEY, RAM'S HORNS, RAMSON(S), ROMMY, ROMS, ROSEMS in various places. He goes on to say: "Turner (1548) gave the English names as Ramsey, Bucrammes (i.e. buck rammes), and Rammes. The Old English name was hramsa. Hramsan, giving Ramson, was the plural, so that Ransoms is a double plural. there are a good many hramsa place-names, e.g. Ramsbottom in Lancashire [meaning] 'Ramson valley', Ramsey in Essex and Huntingdonshire, meaning Ramson island." "Gerard [Herbal, 1597] wrote that in the low country fish sauce was made from the leaves, which 'maye very well be eaten in April and Maie with butter, [by] such as are of a strong constitution, and labouring men'." John Grimshaw Dr John M. Grimshaw Garden Manager, Colesbourne Gardens Sycamore Cottage Colesbourne Nr Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL53 9NP UK Z7/8 Website: http://www.colesbournegardens.org.uk/ ----- Original Message ----- From: <Antennaria@aol.com> To: <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2004 4:06 AM Subject: Re: [pbs] UK bulbs on the wiki > Jim McKenney jimmckenney@starpower.net wrote: > > >Another question is for Mark McDonough > >and concerns Allium ursinum. {snip} > >is this: as Allium go, are A. ursinum and > >A. tricoccum closely related? > > Hi Jim, and PBS crew, > > I sort of answered this in part, in my last message, posted before seeing > your message because I receive my PBS posts in daily digest mode. How close the > two species are related, I don't know for sure, but they do indeed resemble > each other. It is also true, that Allium tricoccum or "ramps", stands quite > alone among the North American allium scene (unrelated to any other N. American > allium species), and possibly has relic affinity with Asian flora; the eastern > USA plant flora connection to Asian flora a known phenomenon. There is a > subspecies burdickii, at one point elevated to species standing (which was > ridiculous) and later reduced back to subspecies standing. This variant has red > petioles, reddish tinged leaves (traits found among the typical tricoccum as > well), and other very minor characteristics that vary only slightly from typical > tricoccum. > > Believe it or not, I have never grown Allium ursinum, out of the hundreds of > Allium species and cultivars I have grown. I do have but one single bulb of > Allium tricoccum, which has persisted for some 20 years or more, and blooms > most years (although sometimes skips a year), but never increases... not even > into 2 bulbs! And I've never seen a seedling. I think it's too dry in my garden > for it to prosper. Different than A. ursinum, Allium tricoccum often > produces spring leaves that disappear totally when it blooms (that's how it behaves > in my garden), which is quite a bit different than the behavior of ursinum > where both flowers and leaves are present simultaneously, as far as I know. > > Mark McDonough Pepperell, Massachusetts, United States > antennaria@aol.com "New England" USDA Zone 5 > ============================================== > >> web site under construction - http://www.plantbuzz.com/ << > alliums, bulbs, penstemons, hardy hibiscus, western > american alpines, iris, plants of all types! > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php